


I used to waste time dreaming of being alive (now I only waste time dreaming of you)

by t_hens



Series: reddie [22]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Aged up characters, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Alternate Universe - Neighbors, Alternate Universe - No Pennywise (IT), Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Minor Injuries, Mutual Pining, Period-Typical Homophobia, Strangers to Friends, Summer, aged 16/17
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:48:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25635319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/t_hens/pseuds/t_hens
Summary: After Eddie's aunt gets hurt and his mom decides to stay at the hospital to help with her recovery, he finds himself staying with his aunts neighbors, the Toziers. They are lovely and inviting and even have a son around Eddie's age - Richie.or; Eddie finds himself sleeping on a cot in the room of the cute neighbor boy for summer vacation
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Series: reddie [22]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1534337
Comments: 5
Kudos: 29





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [obsessivelymoody](https://archiveofourown.org/users/obsessivelymoody/gifts).



> edit: this was meant to be a chaptered fic, but I lost my job and between my regular depression, pandemic depression and incoming seasonal depression, I’m finding writing to be very difficult right now. I hope to someday be able to finish it, but unfortunately I don’t think that day will be any day soon :(

The sounds of NPR drifted back to Eddie from his spot in the back of his mom’s Ford Taurus for the fourth hour in a row and he wondered idly if they were driving fast enough for him to pitch himself out the door and escape.

“Aren’t you so excited Eddie Bear?” His mom asked for the millionth time.

No, he thought, he wasn’t excited. 

“Yup,” he answered, like he already had every time she’d asked.

“I know this wasn’t what we had planned for the summer, but your Aunt Pearl really needs our help and she’s really looking forward to seeing us. It’ll be lots of fun.”

Eddie scoffed, but luckily his mom started to rant at one of the callers on the radio so she missed it.

There hadn’t been anything necessarily good planned for the summer, even before his mom had dropped the bomb that they would be packing up and driving six hours to stay with her sister who was getting older and needed some help around the house, (i.e. Eddie was going to be doing chores for _both of them_ this summer rather than just his mom). It’s not like Eddie had friends or plans he was missing out, but at least at home he would have his own room, and his own space. He was used to being alone and isolated, but usually he could at least do it in an environment he was comfortable in.

-

They pulled into the driveway a little after noon; the sun beating down as Eddie unloaded the bags while the women ‘caught up’ as if they didn’t spend two hours several nights a week on the phone gossiping about their neighbors and other family members.

When he was finished, he sat down outside on the porch swing, preferring the shade and lingering heat to the shrill voices inside. His head throbbed and he let himself lament about how truly miserable this summer was shaping up to be. 

A loud _clank_ from a house over caught his attention and he turned to see a boy he thought might be around his age fighting with a bike he was trying to drag out of the garage. The boy looked up and smiled nervously like he could feel Eddie’s eyes on him and gave an awkward wave.

“Hiya!”

Eddie waved back, but didn’t say anything. 

His face must have looked unfriendly because the boy ducked his head and focused on extracting his bike before throwing a leg over and leaving, not waving or saying anything else.

Eddie huffed and crossed his arms. There it had been - a glimmer of a possibility that maybe he could have an ally for the summer - but he ruined it with his surliness. Of course.

-

The first day was about as boring and mind numbing as Eddie had expected. His Aunt Pearl was as incapacitated as his mom, meaning she was just lazy and wanted someone else to do the tasks around the house. His mother had spent most of his life telling him he was sick and fragile to do things like go on field trips and play sports, but once she realized she could use him to do things like clean out the attic and garage and make the grocery store runs, he was suddenly a lot less fragile than she had previously said.

Eddie rearranged the living room and moved and cleaned under the fridge and stove. Cleaned all the cabinets. All the shitty and hard stuff that she didn’t want to do and hadn’t done in probably decades.

He was allowed to be finished when it was dinner time. The food was just as bland as it was at home so Eddie let himself daydream about pizza and nachos, calling it an early night and falling asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.

-

The sounds of screaming was what woke Eddie the next morning. 

Eddie blinked blearily, stumbling out of bed towards the sound. He ripped open the guest room door and once he made it to the stairs he found Pearl and his mom at the bottom of the stairs, Pearl clutching her hip.

“Eddie! Call 911!” His mother told him, and he ran downstairs, doing as he was told.

The EMTs came quickly and took his aunt and his mom to the hospital, leaving Eddie at the house, Sonia promising to call with news as soon as she could. The house was quiet without the TV blaring soap operas and daytime game shows and Eddie didn’t bother to turn it on, enjoying the silence. 

Unsure if they would be back that day or not, Eddie did what he felt would become his normal chores like dishes and sweeping - wanting to keep busy and keep his mind from spiraling into worry. He wasn’t close to his aunt but his mother had installed a deep sense of fear into him when he was young about getting hurt or being sick and he was yet to overcome that particular nuisance. 

He was just finished putting the clean dishes away when there was a knock on the door. The boy he’d seen the day they’d arrive was standing on the porch when he opened the door, bouncing on the balls of his feet, looking around the porch like he didn’t have the attention span to stand still long enough for Eddie to open the door.

“Uh, hi?”

“Oh! Hi! You’re Eddie, right?” The boy asked, thrusting his hand forward.

Eddie stared at his hand for a moment, thinking of germs and wondering when the last time was that he washed his hands, but he grasped it anyway, surprised how soft and gentle his hands were.

“Your mom called our house. She asked my mom if you could stay over at our place cause I guess your aunt like broke her hip and is gonna have to stay in the hospital and have surgery and your mom doesn’t wanna leave her, or something like that. I was kind of listening cause I was in the kitchen making a sandwich.”

Eddie blinked a few times at him, trying to absorb all of this information while also processing the fact that this boy knew all of this before he did. He opened his mouth to reply but the phone rang so he put up a finger to demonstrate a minute and went back to the kitchen to answer it. The boy followed him and wandered around the kitchen, opening random drawers and touching anything he could.

“Hello?”

“Eddie! Oh Eddie Bear, honey! Aunt Pearl broke her hip and she’s gonna be in the hospital for a while and she wants me to stay with her here. The hospital has a bed I can use, and I’ve spoken to Pearl’s neighbors the Tozier’s, Mr. Tozier is a Dentist, and they said you can stay there while I’m helping your Aunt. I’m so sorry honey. I know this is just a mess.”

Eddie breathed out, hoping the relief wasn’t as obvious as it felt. “No, mom, it’s okay. I understand. Tell Aunt Pearl I hope she gets well soon. The Tozier’s son,” he looked at the boy who looked over when he noticed the silence and whispered ‘Richie’ with a smile that made Eddie’s own lips twitch, so he focused back on the conversation with his mother, “Richie, came to get me so I’ll get my stuff ready and head over there. I did the chores and stuff over here and I’ll make sure to come over and keep up on stuff.”

“Oh, you’re such a good boy, Eddie Bear.”

Eddie was suddenly very thankful that Richie couldn’t hear the other side of the phone call. He ended the call as soon as he could after that and headed up stairs to gather some clothes and the few toiletries he’d brought from home.

Richie trailed after him the stairs and to the guest room and sat on the edge of the bed, bouncing lightly, as if sitting still might actually pain him.

“I’m sorry about your aunt,” he said, blue eyes surprisingly earnest behind his oversized black framed glasses. “That really sucks. And your mom having to stay with her sucks too.”

“No, it’s fine. I’m not upset about it,” Eddie said as he shoved clothes into a backpack, not thinking about what he was saying until the words were already out. He lifted his head and shook it quickly, stuttering out an explanation. “I didn’t mean that. Not like that. I-”

Richie cut him off and gave him a casual wave of the hand. “Dude, don’t worry about it. I’d go crazy if I had to spend the whole summer with just my mom and aunt. Like I love them, love the crap out of them, but they drive me crazy. Every Christmas they get wine drunk and cry when they sing Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer.”

Eddie laughed - a full body laugh that left him a little sore after - and he realized it was the first time it had happened since he’d arrived. Maybe even since the summer had started. Richie was beaming at him, pleased as punch, as if getting to make Eddie laugh was some sort of prize. 

Red creeped up Eddie’s cheeks the longer Richie smiled at him, so he focused back on packing and when he was finished he threw it over his shoulder and gestured for Richie to lead the way. He did so happily, taking this as a cue to start telling Eddie all about his house and parents and friends and anything else that popped into his head.

-

Mr and Mrs Tozier, Maggie and Went they insisted, were lovely and inviting and insisted that Eddie make himself at home and help himself to anything. Richie pulled him around by the arm and showed him around each room, occasionally telling him stories of injuries or failed science experiments, times with his friends. It made something in Eddie’s chest ache like when he thought of the hazy memories he had of his father. Richie pulled him up the stairs and into his room and the feeling was placed back in the back of his mind where he preferred to keep it.

Since there were no extra rooms, Eddie was going to be staying on a cot in Richie’s room. There had originally hardly been room for them to both stand in the room, let alone for another bed to be placed in there, so Eddie got to sit on Richie’s bed while he walked around with a garbage bag in one hand and a laundry basket in the other, refusing to believe Eddie when he told him that it was more work holding them at the same time.

Once the room was no longer considered a health hazard, the bed was set up and Eddie moved to sit over there, as Richie fidgeted around his room, trying to find something for them to do.

“What about Nintendo? Do you like Mario?”

Eddie shrugged, staring at a hangnail, being mindful not to pick at it lest he get an infection.

“I’ve never played it. I’m not really allowed to play video games.”

Richie gaped out him for a solid thirty seconds - long enough for Eddie to turn red and start to feel awkward - before he shook his head and patted the spot next to him on the orange shag carpet. 

“Well c’mon, Eds. You gotta learn sometimes.”

Eddie scowled but slid to sit down next to him and took the controller he was handed. “Don’t call me that. My name is Eddie.”

The way Richie’s eyes lit up behind his glasses made Eddie’s heart stutter in his chest and he knew without a doubt in his mind that he’d let Richie call him anything.

“C’mon dickhead,” Eddie tried, hoping he wasn’t going too far, “Teach me how to get this Italian plumber these stupid gold coins.”

Richie burst out in laughter, falling back to the carpet and holding his stomach and Eddie had an errant thought that what he felt right then with Richie was what summer was supposed to feel like.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ‘Richie’s plan for the day - which was revealed after they ate and helped Maggie with the dishes - was to meet his friends at their clubhouse. 
> 
> Eddie, was nervous’

It took a few seconds when Eddie woke up for him to remember where he was. In three days he’d woken up in three different places and his brain throbbed as the memories rushed back in.

A snore ripped through the quiet of the morning and he startled, looking over and seeing Richie laying on his stomach, laying half off his bed, on the verge of sliding off. Eddie couldn’t help the smile that pulled at his mouth, fondness too large in his chest for the small amount of time he’d known the boy in front of him.

Quietly as he could, Eddie tip-toed out of the room to the bathroom to brush his teeth and use the bathroom, sneaking downstairs to see about going back over to Aunt Pearl’s and trying to figure out how to use her coffee machine.

“Oh Eddie, dear,” Maggie said as soon as she saw him come down the stairs. She was in the kitchen measuring out coffee grounds, pancake batter sizzling in a pan on the stove. “I thought I heard someone upstairs and knew it couldn’t be Richie.”

She laughed softly and gestured for Eddie to sit down at the table as she finished dumping grounds and water into the coffee maker and was flipping pancakes. There was a radio on the counter that was playing a Diana Ross song that Maggie was singing to softly. The kitchen slowly filled with the smell of coffee and Eddie sniffed at the scent like a predator after it’s prey. 

“You can make yourself a cup if you’d like, dear,” Maggie told him, chuckling goodnaturedly at him. “Sugar is over here and there is cream in the fridge.”

Eddie stood and poured himself a cup, keeping it black and holding it to his nose, inhaling the bitter scent deeply before sipping the burning liquid. The nurse at his high school had always given him cups of the crappy teachers’ lounge coffee on days when his mother would call in and refuse to let him participate in a field trip or event, and the smell gave him an odd sense of comfort.

“You drink it black?” Maggie asked, piling breakfast onto plates and moving them to the table.

“Uh, yeah,” he shrugged, going for nonchalance and knowing he was missing it by a mile. “That’s just how I've always had it. I don’t think I’d like it with sugar.”

“Wow,” she said, looking impressed, “you’re so mature! Richie won’t eat anything if it’s not covered in sugar, and we still can’t get him to gain any weight - he just grows taller instead.”

“My ears are burning,” Richie crowed at them as he crashed down the stairs before throwing himself into the chair next to Eddie. 

“That shirt is what needs burnt,” Eddie told him, eyeing the orange Bugs Bunny monstrosity next to him.

“Eds! How could you say such cruel things to me! Your best friend!” Richie demanded, gripping Eddie’s shoulder and shaking him.

The touch was like electricity coursing through him and he wiggled away from it, swatting at him, thankful he’d set his coffee down already.

“Alright boys, that’s enough. Eat and then get out of my kitchen,” Maggie admonished with a grin.

They pulled away from each other and for the first time in his life, Eddie understood what it meant to miss another person’s touch.

-

Richie’s plan for the day - which was revealed after they ate and helped Maggie with the dishes - was to meet his friends at their clubhouse. 

Eddie, who had not been able to stop thinking about Richie saying that he was Eddie’s best friend - or the fact that he was technically right - since that morning, was nervous and could feel the uptick in his pulse as they walked further and further into the forest on the edge of town. Richie reassured him, time and time again when Eddie asked, that it was safe and that the clubhouse they were going to was also safe because his friend Ben was practically an architect and had _reinforced_ everything and it was fine.

“You know there’s a reason you need permits to build stuff right?! A sixteen year old ‘reinforcing’ an _underground_ clubhouse doesn’t make it safe!”

Eddie willed himself to shut up; to stop making himself even more of a paranoid weird freak than he had already made himself in front of Richie. He was nervous to meet his friends, and didn’t want their first impression to be him amped on anger and irritation.

“Actually Ben is seventeen,” Richie corrected him, ducking under a low branch and holding it aside for Eddie, who avoided his eye in an attempt to hide the pink in his cheeks from the gesture. 

He huffed, crossing his arms but didn’t turn back to face Richie, just stomped forward in the general direction they’d been headed while Richie snorted behind him.

-

Eddie got to lead the way for about two minutes until Richie grabbed his arm, preventing him from walking straight into an almost completely hidden hole in the ground.

“Holy fuck!” He squawked, stumbling back into Richie and holding onto him until he could get his bearings back.

“You’re okay, Eds. I got you,” he said softly. 

The hand he’d used to grab Eddie was still gripped onto his arm and Eddie looked at it first and then into Richie’s eyes, which were already on his. They held eye contact for a beat, and Eddie had a few errant thoughts about nice of lips Richie had, and how pretty his blue eyes looked even in the dim light of the trees, but before his thoughts got too out of control, there was an irruption of noise from the hole he’d almost fell into, and then they were being joined by what Eddie assumed were Richie’s friends.

The two of them broke apart but Richie remained close enough Eddie could smell the syrup he’d spilled on his shirt and it got mixed up with more thoughts of lips and as he was introduced to everyone he hoped they would all take his flushed cheeks as shyness or nerves.

“Everyone, this is Eds!” Richie exclaimed proudly, hooking his arm around Eddie’s shoulder which just served to make his cheeks pinker.

“Fuck you. Get off me,” Eddie griped, trying to wrestle out of his hold but unable to since Richie had a good five inches on him and was a lot stronger than he looked.

“Richie leave him alone!” One of the boys told him, which only served to cause Richie to loop his other arm around his neck too.

“Stan and Eds! My two favorite guys!”

Eddie, and the boy named Stan, both struggled and cussed at him until a girl, seemingly the only one in the group, came forward and helped extract them.

“Sorry about him,” she told Eddie, helping him stand straight when he wobbled slightly from not having Richie's weight to lean against. “He’s insufferable but his parents always buy the good snacks and have cable TV so we have to put up with him,” she said solemnly, only cracking a smile when Richie made an indignant noise and made a low comment that sounded something like ‘get your own dunkaroos next time, Marsh.’ 

Eddie adored her.

“I’m Bev.” She held out her hand - freckled, pink and clean - and Eddie grasped it gladly. 

“Eddie,” he replied.

Each person took turns introducing themselves and Eddie felt at ease with each handshake and smile he was given. They were such a random group of friends that Eddie felt a sort of kinship with each of them. They were all a little odd and in some cases ‘too much’ that it made his own weird and too much feel like it could be normal, even accepted.

-

Everyone gathered down in the clubhouse (where Eddie did have to admit it was very structurally sound and safe seeming) and sprawled out on their designated spots.

There was a half a second Eddie felt unsure what to do - the ratty couch they’d drug down there was full with Bev, Ben and Mike, with Stan and Bill taking the only other chairs. He looked for a good spot on the ground that wouldn’t get him too dirty, but before he could sit down Richie was pulling him down on to his lap.

“What?!” He shouted, startled at first, and then followed swiftly by nervous and excited with an edge of slightly honry because he was a teenage boy and a a dick other than his own was closer to him than one had been in his whole life.

“I wasn’t gonna make you sit on the floor,” Richie said, shifting a little so Eddie was sideways in his lap and he could wrap his arms around his waist. He used his toes to push against the ground and set a gently rocking motion.

“Is this safe?” Eddie asked, voice pitched higher than normal with concern and Richie gave him a worried look.

“I mean, yeah of course,” he answered quietly enough so only Eddie could hear. “You don’t have to worry about any of them; they aren’t like homophobic or anything.” He paused and looked again at the concerned and now confused look on Eddie’s face. “Uh shit, that is unless -“ he glanced down at where their bodies were pressed together at nearly every point - “If you’re not comfortable you can move. I’m sorry, I should have asked, I didn’t mean to make you -“ 

Eddie shook his head and huffed a laugh quietly that was enough to pause Richie’s panic rant.

“I just meant like, is the hammock gonna hold us? Is the whole clubhouse gonna come down on us from our combined weight?”

Richie's face flushed and he looked sheepishly at Eddie and gave a shaky but relieved laugh. “Uh no, it’ll be fine. Four of us fit on here once when we were drunk on a dare, so me and you should be fine, small fry.”

Eddie pinched at his ribs and Richie squawked at him indignantly. The blush didn’t leave his cheeks for the duration of their time at the clubhouse, but Eddie didn’t leave his lap either, and for once, Eddie let himself enjoy the idea that maybe he was the cause of something good for once.

**Author's Note:**

> ily moody, this is dedicated to you and those two hours of work you have to make up lol


End file.
